Post #741615 by Club Nouméa on Wed, Apr 22, 2015 8:05 AM

Taipivai, Hatiheu, and beyond...

On the northern side of the island of Nuku Hiva lay further places for exploration, the most famous of which is Taipivai, known to the world through Herman Melville's stay there in the 1842 after he jumped ship. I was wondering what to expect when I arrived there. Would it be a tranquil deserted wilderness like this:

Or feature a dusky maiden lazing around just waiting for me?

Or even a whole bevy of them?

Or might the reaction be somewhat hostile, given the long history of European incursions into that valley?

As it turned out, the first image was the one that best matched what I actually saw:

Controleur Bay, and below is the seaward end of the village of Taipivai, which stretches up the valley:

The effects of the tsunami off Japan that caused the Fukushima disaster on 11 March 2011 were felt as far away as Taipivai: according to my guide Yvon, who is from Taipivai, a small tidal wave washed up onto the beach here and destroyed several houses. Some of the families that lost their homes chose to rebuild way up the top end of the valley rather than face that experience again.

We were to return to Taipivai on the way back. Our immediate destination was in the next valley over, on the northern coast; Hatiheu:

As we descended into the valley in Yvon's Landrover, he told about the arrival of the first European missionary here in the 1830s, who disembarked in the middle of a blood feud in which the various inhabitants of the valley were killing each other. For his own protection, he decided to scale the lowest pinnacle to the left of the bay and take shelter there. To while away the hours, he began carving a stone statue of the Virgin Mary. Curious, various locals began climbing up the sheer rock face to ask him what on earth he was doing, and that was the start of the valley's conversion to Christianity.

The statue is still there, and is just visible in this photo taken from Hatiheu, to the right of the two trees in the middle of the rock:

However Hatiheu was not our destination either, we were hiking over the hill to Anaho Bay:

Accompanying us were a French couple on their 50th anniversary holiday. I was somewhat taken aback at the amount of equipment they had with them: fancy hiking boots, the latest outdoor wear and backpacks; they even had those hi-tech composite walking poles so beloved of Europeans when they need to stride over any landform that veers slightly away from horizontal. On top of that, Yvon let slip that he was a fireman with outdoor rescue training who had done the coast-to-coast Ironman race from the West Coast to Greymouth. So just how tough was this trail going to be? I only had street shoes, my Fijian tapa-patterned shirt, a Panama hat and my 1980s vintage UTA travel bag with a bottle of water and some biscuits as my sole resources. Hmm...

On the uphill stretch, it turned out that my main worry was not the severity of the terrain, but the harshness of the the misandrist ramblings of the French wife, who, in the company of three men, ventured to have a go at her husband because he was reluctant to wander just off the steep trail and do number 2s as there was a group coming up the trail behind us: she took this as a cue to start pontificating about how useless men were without a wife to make decisions for them. I replied in my most insouciant French that I had been a bachelor all my life and had managed to get by alright thank you very much, which drew a pained "please don't provoke her" glance from Yvon while he tried to veer the conversation onto another course.

Anyway, this was the view from the summit:

That's Anaho Bay to the left, with a bit of Ha'atuatua Bay visible to the right.

By this stage, I had worked up a mild sweat, but the French couple were looking a bit shaky on their walking poles, and the wife was gasping for breath, so we were thankfully spared of any further pearls of feminine wisdom. The plan to walk as far as Ha'atuatua Bay was also shelved; it looked like the couple would only be able to manage the 30 minute walk down to Anaho Bay.

As we descended down into the valley, Yvon pointed out an abandoned paepae that had once been a family home:

Just below it was the more modern abode that had replaced it:

The sun was out by the time we got down to the beach and stopped to suck on some mangoes Yvon had brought along:

Anaho Bay is strikingly beautiful:

Little wonder that Robert Louis Stevenson praised it when he sailed through these parts in 1888.

We then wandered along the beach to visit the local priest who was in the middle of a coaching session with local kids preparing for a cultural performance:

I had a quick peek in the chapel nearby:

Along the beach and further up the valley were stands of coconut trees:

Amidst them was a copra shed, with sacks full of harvested coconuts waiting to be picked up and shipped off:

Toiling back up the trail to return to Hatiheu, we crossed paths with a young man bringing down coconuts from the back of the valley on his horse:

As the path got steeper, the puffing and wheezing grew louder from the couple, and we had to stop from time to time so they could catch their breath. The wife by this time, was most insistent that I walk ahead of her, until we reached the summit and the downhill stretch, when, like a magnificent butterfly, she metamorphosed into a pole-wielding speed fiend, hell-bent on arriving back at the Landrover first, if only to prove her earlier oft-repeated point that while she was slow uphill, she was very very fast downhill. As we climbed back into the Landrover, from his expression, I could tell Yvon was thinking much the same of her as I was. Never mind, lunch awaited us back in Hatiheu...

The Hinako Nui café was on the waterfront and offered a pleasant view:

And a few tikis:

Along with a nice fish platter:

While a chook strolled around under the tables:

The French wife was by this time indicating that it might be better to call it a day after lunch given how tired she was now feeling, but I was having none of it. I replied that I was feeling fine and was looking forward to the rest of the day: this trip was a two-for-one deal, and the agreement was that in exchange for hiking over hill and dale in the morning, the afternoon would be spent visiting the biggest pre-European archaeological site on the island, along with a visit to admire all the tikis at Taipivai's marae.

I started by taking a few photos of the tikis along the waterfront in Hatiheu:

So off we went, with the grumbling French wife in the back seat complaining about the heat and how tired she was. Not quite the female reception I had hoped for on this trip...

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Toto, j'ai l'impression que nous ne sommes plus au Kansas !
i

[ Edited by: Club Nouméa 2015-04-22 08:22 ]

[ Edited by: 2015-06-08 08:59 ]